Friday, June 08, 2012

I did
pretty well with Life, yesterday, except for not sending off the driving
license application. That will have to be top of the list today.

Knitting

I lack but
five rounds before the ribbing, so two more sessions should see this job
finished. Here are the socks, a bit blurry, and I’m pretty pleased with them.

Thanks for
the suggestion about using a contrast yarn for the ribbing of Alexander’s
socks, Roobeedoo. His socks are
to be Van Gogh’s famous Bedroom at Arles. Ketki’s were the much less
famous Restaurant de la Sirene. I had planned to use her leftovers to finish
off his socks, the colour ranges being not dissimilar. I’ll get the leftovers
out and look at them with the new yarn – if you can’t hide it, make a feature
of it.

If you
follow the link to Roobeedoo’s blog (well worth doing), you will find a link to
the Sock Report,
news to me and so wonderful that I have put the link here as well. A Twist
Collective for socks.

I did bake
the moth-y madelinetosh yarn last night, successfully at least inasmuch as it
doesn’t look or smell scorched. I’ll put it away today in one of the ziplock
bags my husband keeps for his sweaters. Moths seem particularly fond of him, as
well – I agree – as having a sense of which yarn is expensive and beloved. He
wears the green madelinetosh I recently knit him pretty well daily. When he
lays it aside, it will be as well to wash it and put it away very promptly.

Vegetable-growing

Thank you
for the vegetable-growing comments, Mary
Lou. It is indeed worth remembering that nature – and the weather – are
capricious. I have looked carefully at the soil requirements for the “easy’s”
which defeat me (onions, beets, kale), and see that all need lime, whereas the
“easy’s” that I can grow, don’t. I think I had better pay a lot more attention to
alkalinity.

I spent a
jolly half-hour just now trying to find some skirret seed. It sounds just my
sort of thing. I think I have finally succeeded in ordering some from Germany.

Life

I got on
well with the dining room problem yesterday. It has been obvious for some time
that it is far easier to deal with the firms which actually do things than with
the ones where people push paper around. I count eight separate organisations
in this game so far, starting with our insurance broker. No wonder insurance is
so expensive.

At any
rate, both the putting-up of scaffolding and the knocking-down of ceiling will
happen on the same day next week, namely Wednesday (freeing us to go to
Strathardle on Monday, I hope). The knockers-down will come in first and put
down protection on the floor from front door to dining room, before the
scaffolders move in. Alexander will be here to make them tea and to seal off
the rooms at the far end of the house which neither he nor they will need
access to.

3 comments:

Our neighborhood sits right above limestone caves, si I assumed our soil was plenty alkaline, but perhaps I should check. There is also the critter problems, squirrels, rabbits, woodchucks. Life in the city....Good luck with the ceiling repair!

I have a question about the administrative trivia side of life, but I hesitate to open this can of worms.As a US citizen living outside of the USA, do you file tax returns with the IRS even if you do not owe anything? The new forms require lists of all bank accounts outside of the USA. I am struggling with this task this year. Let's just say I was in arrears in filing IRS forms although I do not owe anything.